Callum Ward
Biographic Data
| ID | 3650701 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Callum Ward |
| GIVEN NAMES | Callum |
| FAMILY NAME | Ward |
| SIGNATURE | WARD C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1768-1725 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 171 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Affordable housing, finance and the state
The scale of the 21st-century urban housing challenge has prompted state actors in both the Global North and South to adopt increasingly interventionist approaches to ‘affordable’ housing production. This article draws on research in six cities (Shanghai, Nairobi, Paris, Casablanca, Salford and Rome) to discuss the changing relationship between housing, finance and the state through a global comparative perspective. It adopts an urban statecraft …
Anxiety status
This commentary responds to Bassens et al.'s call for a ‘foundational economy’ agenda in economic geography around the ‘fallen below’ and foundational liveability. I argue that their critique of the ‘left behind places’ literature lands and that their geographical synthesis of systems of provision, everyday lifeworlds, and political subjectification offers a promising research agenda for the present moment. However, I argue, the concept of ‘falle…
Political Economy in Housing Studies
How to Make a City into a Firetrap
Despite legislation banning combustible cladding materials after the 2017 Grenfell fire, at least 10,000 buildings were still awaiting remediation in 2022. This is in large part because fragmented ownership and management structures alongside the specificities of British property law produced a situation in which individual apartment owners (leaseholders) were liable for the costs of remediation rather than those who own the buildings (freeholder…
Struggling over new asset geographies
In this response, we address criticisms of our definition of assetization from an accounting perspective, its overlap with financialization, and the relationship between value and valuation it posits. We reflect on a future agenda around assetization emphasizing the political dimensions of externalizing future costs and the implications of rising inflation
In memoriam
The political economy of land value capture in the UK
This paper contextualises the political economy of land value capture (LVC) within the shift to an increasingly financialised, rentier-dominated capitalism. Contributing to an emerging dialogue between social constructivist planning literature on performativity in LVC and the critical political economy literature on rents and rentiership, we overview Salford's planning policy trajectory in recent decades in order to highlight how the UK planning …
State capitalism, capitalist statism
We respond to the special issue's call for a multiscalar, historicised approach to state capitalism through an exploration of Sovereign Wealth Fund investment into London real estate. We point to how the UK's ostensibly market-led recovery since the 2008 financial crisis has relied in part on attracting 'patient' state capitalist investments. In this, we contextualise the relational regulation of real estate markets as the outcome of intersecting…
Introduction
Towards a virtual statecraft
In this paper we draw on the findings of a mixed methods research project that has examined the production, regulation, and delivery of housing in London. Our aim is to develop fresh insights into the growing mobilisation of numbers and targets in contemporary planning systems. More specifically, we bring two fields of literature into conversation. First, drawing on recent contributions from Pike et al. (2019) we develop their notion of ‘city sta…
Assetization and the ‘new asset geographies’
An asset is both a resource and property, in that it generates income streams with its sale price based on the capitalization of those revenues. Although an asset's income streams can be financially sliced up, aggregated, and speculated upon across highly diverse geographies, there still has to be something underpinning these financial operations. Something has to generate the income that a political economic actor can lay claim to through a prop…
Anticipating demand shocks
‘Patient capital’ is presented by many policymakers as a panacea to address domestic (and sometimes city-level) gaps in financing urban development, particularly housing, that emerged in the post-2008 credit crunch. In this article, we analyse the complexities of patient investors’ entry into residential markets in London and their response to the first major, and unexpected, crisis of demand: the COVID-19 pandemic and immediate falls in market d…
Land financialisation, planning informalisation and gentrification as statecraft in Antwerp
This article offers insight into the role of the state in land financialisation through a reading of urban hegemony. This offers the basis for a conjunctural analysis of the politics of planning within a context in which authoritarian neoliberalism is ascendant across Europe. I explore this through the case of Antwerp as it underwent a hegemonic shift in which the nationalist neoliberal party the New Flemish Alliance (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie; N-V…
Data as asset? The measurement, governance, and valuation of digital personal data by Big Tech
Digital personal data is increasingly framed as the basis of contemporary economies, representing an important new asset class. Control over these data assets seems to explain the emergence and dominance of so-called “Big Tech” firms, consisting of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google/Alphabet, and Facebook. These US-based firms are some of the largest in the world by market capitalization, a position that they retain despite growing policy and publi…
Capital, Secondary Circuit of
The secondary circuit of capital is the sphere of commodity circulation, exchange, and consumption. It is a major theme in urban studies because it highlights the structural economic dynamics of capitalist urbanization, especially the role of real estate bubbles and financial crises. The primary/secondary circuit distinction between productive and unproductive labor has also meant this framing is highly relevant to Marxist feminist debates. Recen…
The annihilation of time by space in the Covid-19 pandemic downturn
A defining feature of capitalism has been its ‘annihilation of space by time’ in the constant reduction of geographical barriers to rapid exchange. Overviewing how the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown has triggered a financial crisis staunched only by massive government bailouts, this commentary points to a need to orient analysis to the annihilation of time by space
Contradictions of Financial Capital Switching
David Harvey argued there to be an animating tension at the heart of the geographical dynamics of capital: a simultaneous need for both spatial fixity and perpetual motion. I adapt this frame for an era of financial globalization, arguing that fixity has been overcome through a 'quaternary circuit' of credit-mediated capital switching which undermines the distinct roles of the three circuits Harvey identified. However, rather than resolving the f…
Neoliberal Europeanisation, Variegated Financialisation
Revisiting attempts to connect comparative political economy and the geographies of finance, we present a balance sheet analysis of financialisation in the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany from 1992–2012. We define financialisation broadly as a trend towards a greater reliance on assets and/or debt, with particular manifestations across different domains of the economy: a greater reliance on financial tools and metrics for the state and non‐finan…
Neoliberalisation from the Ground Up
In this paper we argue that “assetisation” has been a central axis through which both neoliberalisation and financialisation have encroached in the post‐Fordist era. We focus on the mobilisation of land as a financial asset in northwest England's former industrial heartlands, offering an account of how property developer the Peel Group came to dominate the land and port infrastructure of the region through aggressive debt‐led expansion and, in pa…
Anne Haila 2016
Neoliberalisation from the Ground Up
In this paper we argue that “assetisation” has been a central axis through which both neoliberalisation and financialisation have encroached in the post‐Fordist era. We focus on the mobilisation of land as a financial asset in northwest England's former industrial heartlands, offering an account of how property developer the Peel Group came to dominate the land and port infrastructure of the region through aggressive debt‐led expansion and, in pa…
Assetization and the ‘new asset geographies’
An asset is both a resource and property, in that it generates income streams with its sale price based on the capitalization of those revenues. Although an asset's income streams can be financially sliced up, aggregated, and speculated upon across highly diverse geographies, there still has to be something underpinning these financial operations. Something has to generate the income that a political economic actor can lay claim to through a prop…
Land financialisation, planning informalisation and gentrification as statecraft in Antwerp
This article offers insight into the role of the state in land financialisation through a reading of urban hegemony. This offers the basis for a conjunctural analysis of the politics of planning within a context in which authoritarian neoliberalism is ascendant across Europe. I explore this through the case of Antwerp as it underwent a hegemonic shift in which the nationalist neoliberal party the New Flemish Alliance (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie; N-V…
Neoliberal Europeanisation, Variegated Financialisation
Revisiting attempts to connect comparative political economy and the geographies of finance, we present a balance sheet analysis of financialisation in the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany from 1992–2012. We define financialisation broadly as a trend towards a greater reliance on assets and/or debt, with particular manifestations across different domains of the economy: a greater reliance on financial tools and metrics for the state and non‐finan…
Anticipating demand shocks
‘Patient capital’ is presented by many policymakers as a panacea to address domestic (and sometimes city-level) gaps in financing urban development, particularly housing, that emerged in the post-2008 credit crunch. In this article, we analyse the complexities of patient investors’ entry into residential markets in London and their response to the first major, and unexpected, crisis of demand: the COVID-19 pandemic and immediate falls in market d…
State capitalism, capitalist statism
We respond to the special issue's call for a multiscalar, historicised approach to state capitalism through an exploration of Sovereign Wealth Fund investment into London real estate. We point to how the UK's ostensibly market-led recovery since the 2008 financial crisis has relied in part on attracting 'patient' state capitalist investments. In this, we contextualise the relational regulation of real estate markets as the outcome of intersecting…
The political economy of land value capture in the UK
This paper contextualises the political economy of land value capture (LVC) within the shift to an increasingly financialised, rentier-dominated capitalism. Contributing to an emerging dialogue between social constructivist planning literature on performativity in LVC and the critical political economy literature on rents and rentiership, we overview Salford's planning policy trajectory in recent decades in order to highlight how the UK planning …
Introduction
How to Make a City into a Firetrap
Despite legislation banning combustible cladding materials after the 2017 Grenfell fire, at least 10,000 buildings were still awaiting remediation in 2022. This is in large part because fragmented ownership and management structures alongside the specificities of British property law produced a situation in which individual apartment owners (leaseholders) were liable for the costs of remediation rather than those who own the buildings (freeholder…
Struggling over new asset geographies
In this response, we address criticisms of our definition of assetization from an accounting perspective, its overlap with financialization, and the relationship between value and valuation it posits. We reflect on a future agenda around assetization emphasizing the political dimensions of externalizing future costs and the implications of rising inflation
Anne Haila 2016
Political Economy in Housing Studies
The annihilation of time by space in the Covid-19 pandemic downturn
A defining feature of capitalism has been its ‘annihilation of space by time’ in the constant reduction of geographical barriers to rapid exchange. Overviewing how the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown has triggered a financial crisis staunched only by massive government bailouts, this commentary points to a need to orient analysis to the annihilation of time by space
Contradictions of Financial Capital Switching
David Harvey argued there to be an animating tension at the heart of the geographical dynamics of capital: a simultaneous need for both spatial fixity and perpetual motion. I adapt this frame for an era of financial globalization, arguing that fixity has been overcome through a 'quaternary circuit' of credit-mediated capital switching which undermines the distinct roles of the three circuits Harvey identified. However, rather than resolving the f…
Anne Haila 2016
Neoliberalisation from the Ground Up
In this paper we argue that “assetisation” has been a central axis through which both neoliberalisation and financialisation have encroached in the post‐Fordist era. We focus on the mobilisation of land as a financial asset in northwest England's former industrial heartlands, offering an account of how property developer the Peel Group came to dominate the land and port infrastructure of the region through aggressive debt‐led expansion and, in pa…
Neoliberal Europeanisation, Variegated Financialisation
Revisiting attempts to connect comparative political economy and the geographies of finance, we present a balance sheet analysis of financialisation in the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany from 1992–2012. We define financialisation broadly as a trend towards a greater reliance on assets and/or debt, with particular manifestations across different domains of the economy: a greater reliance on financial tools and metrics for the state and non‐finan…
Capital, Secondary Circuit of
The secondary circuit of capital is the sphere of commodity circulation, exchange, and consumption. It is a major theme in urban studies because it highlights the structural economic dynamics of capitalist urbanization, especially the role of real estate bubbles and financial crises. The primary/secondary circuit distinction between productive and unproductive labor has also meant this framing is highly relevant to Marxist feminist debates. Recen…
The annihilation of time by space in the Covid-19 pandemic downturn
A defining feature of capitalism has been its ‘annihilation of space by time’ in the constant reduction of geographical barriers to rapid exchange. Overviewing how the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown has triggered a financial crisis staunched only by massive government bailouts, this commentary points to a need to orient analysis to the annihilation of time by space
Contradictions of Financial Capital Switching
David Harvey argued there to be an animating tension at the heart of the geographical dynamics of capital: a simultaneous need for both spatial fixity and perpetual motion. I adapt this frame for an era of financial globalization, arguing that fixity has been overcome through a 'quaternary circuit' of credit-mediated capital switching which undermines the distinct roles of the three circuits Harvey identified. However, rather than resolving the f…
Data as asset? The measurement, governance, and valuation of digital personal data by Big Tech
Digital personal data is increasingly framed as the basis of contemporary economies, representing an important new asset class. Control over these data assets seems to explain the emergence and dominance of so-called “Big Tech” firms, consisting of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google/Alphabet, and Facebook. These US-based firms are some of the largest in the world by market capitalization, a position that they retain despite growing policy and publi…
Towards a virtual statecraft
In this paper we draw on the findings of a mixed methods research project that has examined the production, regulation, and delivery of housing in London. Our aim is to develop fresh insights into the growing mobilisation of numbers and targets in contemporary planning systems. More specifically, we bring two fields of literature into conversation. First, drawing on recent contributions from Pike et al. (2019) we develop their notion of ‘city sta…
Assetization and the ‘new asset geographies’
An asset is both a resource and property, in that it generates income streams with its sale price based on the capitalization of those revenues. Although an asset's income streams can be financially sliced up, aggregated, and speculated upon across highly diverse geographies, there still has to be something underpinning these financial operations. Something has to generate the income that a political economic actor can lay claim to through a prop…
Anticipating demand shocks
‘Patient capital’ is presented by many policymakers as a panacea to address domestic (and sometimes city-level) gaps in financing urban development, particularly housing, that emerged in the post-2008 credit crunch. In this article, we analyse the complexities of patient investors’ entry into residential markets in London and their response to the first major, and unexpected, crisis of demand: the COVID-19 pandemic and immediate falls in market d…
Land financialisation, planning informalisation and gentrification as statecraft in Antwerp
This article offers insight into the role of the state in land financialisation through a reading of urban hegemony. This offers the basis for a conjunctural analysis of the politics of planning within a context in which authoritarian neoliberalism is ascendant across Europe. I explore this through the case of Antwerp as it underwent a hegemonic shift in which the nationalist neoliberal party the New Flemish Alliance (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie; N-V…
Struggling over new asset geographies
In this response, we address criticisms of our definition of assetization from an accounting perspective, its overlap with financialization, and the relationship between value and valuation it posits. We reflect on a future agenda around assetization emphasizing the political dimensions of externalizing future costs and the implications of rising inflation
In memoriam
The political economy of land value capture in the UK
This paper contextualises the political economy of land value capture (LVC) within the shift to an increasingly financialised, rentier-dominated capitalism. Contributing to an emerging dialogue between social constructivist planning literature on performativity in LVC and the critical political economy literature on rents and rentiership, we overview Salford's planning policy trajectory in recent decades in order to highlight how the UK planning …
State capitalism, capitalist statism
We respond to the special issue's call for a multiscalar, historicised approach to state capitalism through an exploration of Sovereign Wealth Fund investment into London real estate. We point to how the UK's ostensibly market-led recovery since the 2008 financial crisis has relied in part on attracting 'patient' state capitalist investments. In this, we contextualise the relational regulation of real estate markets as the outcome of intersecting…
Introduction
Political Economy in Housing Studies
How to Make a City into a Firetrap
Despite legislation banning combustible cladding materials after the 2017 Grenfell fire, at least 10,000 buildings were still awaiting remediation in 2022. This is in large part because fragmented ownership and management structures alongside the specificities of British property law produced a situation in which individual apartment owners (leaseholders) were liable for the costs of remediation rather than those who own the buildings (freeholder…
Affordable housing, finance and the state
The scale of the 21st-century urban housing challenge has prompted state actors in both the Global North and South to adopt increasingly interventionist approaches to ‘affordable’ housing production. This article draws on research in six cities (Shanghai, Nairobi, Paris, Casablanca, Salford and Rome) to discuss the changing relationship between housing, finance and the state through a global comparative perspective. It adopts an urban statecraft …
Anxiety status
This commentary responds to Bassens et al.'s call for a ‘foundational economy’ agenda in economic geography around the ‘fallen below’ and foundational liveability. I argue that their critique of the ‘left behind places’ literature lands and that their geographical synthesis of systems of provision, everyday lifeworlds, and political subjectification offers a promising research agenda for the present moment. However, I argue, the concept of ‘falle…
Economics (16 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (16 works) · Political science (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Finance (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Economy (7 works) · Political economy (7 works) · Political and Economic history of UK and US (6 works)